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a shopfront on the street · the farms’ stand · open all night

A farm stand on the street

The Honesty Box

What the land past the campgrounds grows, on a stand at the kerb: prices on the board, money in the box, and nobody watching.

The stand is a counter with a little roof, at the kerb, and it lights itself: a panel on the roof charges a battery under the counter all day, and at night a white lamp under the eave throws a cone of light over the shelves, so everything in it keeps its own colour while the street around it is dark. It runs the fridge and the freezer too. Everything on it comes from Nature’s Contribution, most of it from All Together Now Farms, and the farm trusts you with it.

At the kerb

In words: a dark street with a pale kerb. A small wooden stand with a pitched roof and a solar panel on the roof, and under its eave a white lamp throwing a cone of light down over two shelves: corn, squash, red and green peppers, cherry tomatoes, bunches of herbs and orange marigolds on the top shelf, and a box of eggs, skeins of wool, bags of nuts, a coil of rope, folded cloth and seed packets on the lower one. Under the counter, a fridge, a freezer and a battery. At the end of the counter, a wooden box with a slot and a padlock. A painted board leans against the post beside it, with lines of red writing on it.

The board

Prices are the farm’s own and change with the season. Every milk and cheese is pasteurised, and every meat says which animal.

Wool

Hemp

In the fridge

Kept cold, off the stand’s own panel and battery.

In the freezer

Kept cold, off the stand’s own panel and battery.

From the fields

Flowers and seeds

How the box works

What is not in the box

Job marker — a coin, dropped by the box

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: What will the box not sell?

Before the code: One thing grown on the land is never in the honesty box, because nobody is there to ask your age. What is it?

Hint 1

It is the first thing under What is not in the box.

Hint 2

It grows in hoop houses north-west of the stile.

Last hint

The farm it comes from is called Gentle Help.

Give me the answer

The answer is Cannabis. Cannabis: you have to be 21 to buy it in Colorado, and a box nobody watches cannot ask anybody's age, so it goes to licensed dispensaries only.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: TRUST

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so — and at the stand, nothing moves even then.